32 Women Register to Run in Kuwait Election
Agence France-Presse - 04 June, 2006
Thirty-two women were among 402 hopefuls who signed to stand
in the June 29 Kuwaiti general elections at the close of candidate
registration.
The women, who are voting and running in parliamentary
elections for the first time in the oil-rich Gulf state, are due to kick off
their election campaigns on Sunday.
The candidates have until four days
before the election date to withdraw from the race and observers are expecting
more than 100 to pull out.
Candidates often withdraw if they deem their
chances of election to be poor or if they strike alliances with other
candidates, agreeing to channel the votes they would have received to them in
exchange for tradeoffs.
The elections were called after Emir Sheikh Sabah
al-Ahmad al-Sabah dissolved parliament on May 21 following a bitter dispute
between the government and opposition MPs over electoral
reform.
Opposition MPs have accused the government of deliberately
blocking efforts to stamp out vote-buying by reducing the number of
constituencies.
Of the 50 members in the dissolved parliament, 47 are
bidding to retain their seats, including 28 of the 29 opposition MPs who pledged
to back a request, filed by three of them, to quiz Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser
Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah.
Several Islamist and liberal groupings are
contesting the election which is being branded by reformists as a "true battle
between corruption and reform."
But the Islamist Ummah Party, launched
last year as the first political party in an Arab Gulf state, said Wednesday it
would boycott the polls because of fraud concerns.
The number of eligible
voters is 340,000, of whom 195,000, or 57 percent, are women. Kuwait has a
native population of one million besides two million
foreigners.